Archive of Our Own

"Give me some music; music, moody food
Of us that trade in love."
— Antony and Cleopatra, William Shakespeare, Act 2, Scene 5.

Silas had never been a man of many vices. An archeologist must always have a sharp eye, his Structures and Computation elective professor at Yale had told him once, years before any of this, catching him mid-nap between revisions. A sharp eye, and a sharper mind. So Silas would push the hair from his eyes—they were shorter then, barely brushing the nape of his neck—and force the swimming lines of his history textbook back into focus with his glasses shoved high on his nose.

Laziness was a vice when you indulged in it too long and too often. It gave the same heady rush as alcohol or cigarettes, or as lust and deceit on a more behavioral level. A guilty sort of pleasure. But Silas, for all his focus and all his doctorates, was a human being first.

And Silas the human being had his own vices separate from Silas the archeologist. That heady rush he indulged in only when wandering eyes were busy someplace else.

Which is why, that night, he found himself walking toward Oskar Rex into the darkness lining the ballroom walls.

Meadowgloom Manor had this old-timely charm to it. It wore its age well. That was the first thing Silas noticed, the architecture. The heavy European classical detailing was from the Gilded Age, somewhere around 1891 if he had to wager, but the sprawl of gardens in artful disarray was probably more Naturalistic. Or so he assumed; he was an archeologist, not an architect, and even though both professions had a tendency to overlap he'd leave the garden analysis to the obnoxious Jackie. Might give the man something to do besides trail after him, Silas thought, not without bitterness.

All this to say, the manor's vintage scene had been cut through by Edward's smooth jazz and Anna's molten voice as the duo commanded the ballroom stage. Will's guests spun through the wide room with varying shade of enthusiasm, murmuring Would you care to dance? to one another between giggles, and with every turn a fresh wave of gunpowder, whiskey, and tobacco rose up to meet Silas' nose.

It promised to be quite a night, he'd concluded, and even a man as reserved as himself could stand to indulge in his own privacy, which brings us back to Silas making his way to Oskar.

Oskar had never been much of a dancer—much of anything, really, except for spectacularly single-minded—in all the the years Silas had known him. He hadn't been wrong to guess he'd rather watch as everyone else danced.

"Not fancying a dance, old man?" Oskar asked without looking at him, his eyes fixed on the dancefloor, though his shoulders tensed the moment they brushed Silas'.

Silas leaned on the window beside him. The air was suffocatingly warm, and he relinquished in the cool dampness of the glass against his back against the hot summer night. "Ha. I don't—dance much, really," he smiled. Then, under the pretense of a joke, albeit a tad awkwardly, "But, if you're willing to, you know, take my arm…"

It got Oskar to look at him. There it was again, that peculiar hard and scrutinizing purple, complicated on a good day and unreadable on the worst. Deciphering was Silas' trade: decoding and encoding and transcribing for others to understand. He did plenty of it on his day to day, and far more during the war. He'd never once managed to fully decode Oskar, however, no matter how much he'd tried over the years and no matter how… friendly, they became. Even so, he wasn't sure he wanted to if he was honest. To decode something was to make it legible which meant, eventually, sharing it. Handing it over for the sake of the larger understanding of human knowledge, or something like that.

And, well, Silas was a little selfish in this one particular. If he ever did decode Oskar, the physical fact of him and the thoughts behind the cut of his words, he'd want to keep the findings for himself. To bury them in a box only he had the key to, so he alone could return again and again to excavate and autopsy. But as an archeologist, he couldn't very well do that, could he? He knew what happened to things once they were unearthed.

He'd content himself with guesses. He'd rather have the undecipherable version of Oskar, kept whole and unknown, than to share him—or not have him at all.

"Yeah, no," Oskar ended up brushing him off. "I'd rather throw myself off the balcony than to dance."

Silas laughed under his breath, watching Oskar bring the glass he was nursing to his lips. An amber liquid brushed his mouth as he drank, eyes never once leaving Silas'.

"Sorry, did I disappoint?"

"Not at all," Silas lied, only to nod at his drink. "That's not wine."

"It isn't. Solomon over there got his hands on a key to the cellar and smuggled out some whiskey. Quality one, too. Insufferable as he is, I suppose he's made himself useful for once. Want some?"

Oskar tilted the glass toward him.

… Silas wasn't about to say no. Liquor had gotten harder and harder to come by under the Volstead Act, and he'd always had a taste for it. The drowsy pull it had always coaxed him a little further out of his shell, and he enjoyed the taste. He'd gladly take anything stronger than glorified grape juice. Wrapping his hand around the cool glass, he tried not to notice how his fingers lingered against Oskar's by savoring the smoky burn sliding down his throat under the other's watchful gaze.

"Shit—that's strong," Silas coughed out.

"Thought it might make this masquerade go faster."

Oskar was watching him with poorly concealed amusement, interest glinting bright in those violet eyes of his, enough to make Silas squirm in place. He took another sip—if only to have something to do with his hands and mouth. As he did, a blonde figure whirled past them in a flurry of feminine laughter. Jophiel Armstrong, if memory served, twirling the dark-haired reporter whose name had escaped him. He watched the two of them move to the saxophone's slow intoxication, Jophiel's powder-dusted hands settled at the dip of the reporter's waist, hidden by her unusual three-piece suit.

Both recognition and panic flickered in Silas' stomach, gone as quickly as it came once he remembered that two women, two friends, might raise far less suspicion on a ballroom floor than two men ever could.

He took another gulp, right where Oskar's mouth had been.

"Silas," Oskar drawled and nudged his shoulder. "Here I thought you weren't a lightweight." His eyes, though, had drifted off him again, landing too on Jophiel and the reporter. Ha.

"I'm not. Go blame the goddamn—18th Amendment, or something. It's been ages since I've had anything good to drink," Silas protested and, to drive the point home, threw back what remained of the whiskey. It dragged Oskar's eyes back to him. "Why masquerade?"

"Mm?" Oskar took the empty glass back as Silas handed it over.

"You said masquerade. Last I checked, this is just a dinner party."

"Ah." He clicked his tongue. "That. Won't deny it is, but old Will's guest list is—questionable, to put it kindly."

Silas snorted. "You think everyone's questionable, Rex. Actually, as far as the definition of questionable goes, I think you qualify rather well yourself."

"I'm selective with my company, is all," Oskar said with a half smile and a meaningful look. Silas watched, transfixed, as one of his knuckle came to rub at the spot on the glass where both their mouths had touched. He found himself craving for another drink. "What I mean is, most of everyone invited tonight has something against Lord Byewill."

Silas' brows shot up but the longer he thought about it, the more the eclectic guest list started to make sense.

"Do you have something against him?" he asked, voice dropping low.

Oskar tilted his head, defiance and teasing in the motion, as if testing. In a strange instant, despite the years and inches between them, he seemed like the the taller and older one. Ah, there it was. That heady rush. Though Silas couldn't be entirely sure how much of it was the whiskey.

"I don't know. Do you?"

Yes.

But Silas, as established, was a terribly selfish man where his secrets were concerned, so he said nothing and turned himself back to the dancing guests instead. Anna and Edward had launched into a softer song and the earlier pairs eased into new ones with the change in tempo: Lady Arietta now dancing with Solomon, Madalynn watching her brother from the edge of the stage… Jophiel and the reporter, though, hadn't loosened their flirtatious hold on each other at all. Not that anyone but Silas would notice it to be flirtatious. Anyone but Silas and, surely, Oskar.

"D'you know where Solomon stashed that whiskey? I could get behind another drink. I'll even take some moonshine," Silas asked instead, innocent enough.

Oskar scoffed. "Son of a bitch probably hid it the second he handed me a glass. No chance I'm getting that bottle back, and it's not like we're best of—you smoke?"

Clearly, that wasn't where his sentence had originally been headed judging by the surprised tone of his voice. Silas hadn't even noticed himself toying with the cigarette in his pocket, and hadn't noticed drawing it out either until he raised to examine it under Oskar's furrowed brows. "Occasionally," Silas admitted, clearing his throat. "This one's not mine, though. Solomon gave it to me earlier."

"Christ, what doesn't that man trade in."

"Hey. I haven't seen him dealing in weaponry yet."

"God forbid he steals Armstrong's job."

"Right. Who knows what she'd do to him."

Oskar chuckled at that, a gravelly sound that echoed throughout Silas' entire body, though his gaze had drifted somewhere far off, watching as Silas rolled the cigarette absently between deft fingers. Silas caught his look. "Something wrong?"

"What? Oh." A huff of humorless laughter shook loose from Oskar's shoulders, his focus flicking from Silas to the cigarette, and back again. "No, nothing. It—reminded me of Egypt. Nothing important."

It never failed to astonish Silas, how a single word could pull so much into focus at once.

When he was hands deep in dust for artifacts and palming stone walls for clues, it was always one word that stitched together every loose thread he'd been gathering. There could be one word standing between him and the Lost City of Atlantis and he'd never even know it, not until he found it. For example: red always brought him back to a night at the bar with his classmates from a mandatory art course, all of them ribbing their teacher who always complained there weren't enough red in their drawings. Harpy dropped him straight back onto a train two years (or so) gone, on which there had been a ride that had gone spectacularly wrong.

Egypt, though—Egypt took him back to an excavation site in Luxor. Back to a threadbare tent shuddering against the cold wind of the desert, nothing to keep them warm but the smell of smoke and the heat of bodies. Weeks of stolen glances and sleepless nights bonding over research and conversations. A kiss, only the one, for the duration of a night.

Egypt held many memories Silas shared with Oskar.

A year prior, in 1922, Oskar Rex had been nearly the only one willing to gamble on Silas' plan to excavate what the world now called the Valley of the Kings—it was thanks to him, in no small part, that the dig had happened at all. I've always had good odds with underdogs, he'd told Silas at the time, and though Silas was hardly an underdog by then, having carved out a fair name for himself in the field, he wasn't about to argue with the man footing the bill. The one condition had been that Oskar accompany him, if only to make sure his money wasn't being spent on a fool's errand.

It hadn't been, but nearing the end of the excavation, both their motivations had underwent some changes.

They'd crossed paths again since, but only ever in passing, and keeping contact was a dire ordeal when both of them lived lives this crowded. And though Silas would be lying if he claimed he'd never lingered on the memory, neither of them had ever once brought it up again.

Until now.

"I smoked in—Egypt," Silas said. Trying to mask his surprise proved difficult when he stumbled over the country's name.

"Did you?" Oskar asked, puzzled. "I distinctly remember you complaining about the smell of the smoke. That's why I'm surprised."

"Well, I'm not big on cigar smoke, and that's mostly what the crew smoked at the site. I'm more fond of cigarettes," Silas explained, some long buried irritation flickering at the memory of them.

It was the smell caught in the tent when you looked at my mouth that night. Do you remember? Do you?

"Ah. That might explain it, then."

"Probably, yeah."

The room was vibrant with jazz, conversations, and loud laughter, and yet the silence between them was deafening in comparison. It sat there as a living thing would, humming in the narrow gap between their shoulders. There wasn't any space between us then. Do you remember? Do you? Do you, do you, do you?

Silas felt, for a man of his standing and age, embarrassingly desperate.

Anna and Edward eased into a third song, and Silas seized that escape route with both hands. "Well, I feel like dancing. I s'pose you don't…?"

He left the question trail off unfinished, mostly because he was unwilling to voice the rest of it aloud, and also because he already knew the answer. You danced with me in Egypt. We played one of their records and we danced. Do you remember? You were terrible but it was just the two of us in the world then, so it's not as though it mattered. Do you? Do you, do you, do—

"Do you want me to jump off the balcony, Silas?" Oskar asked with a raised brow.

"That's never something I'd say out loud."

"So you're admitting you'd still think it."

Silas didn't answer and simply threw him a smile over his shoulder, and—he hadn't really thought about what he'd do next. He did actually want to dance, if he was honest, but he hadn't spoken to nearly enough people here to have viable options, and everyone he had spoken to was already paired off. But still, he could try and take his chances with—

"Miss Armstrong?"

Jophiel turned from her conversation with the reporter, blonde hair catching the chandelier light like a halo as she took him in. She was northing short of dazzling, all in emerald silk and pine velvet glove climbing past her elbows, but there was something faintly intimidating in the calculation behind her eyes. Silas respected it. If the two of them had shared different tastes in company, this dance might have meant something more than it was about to.

"Yes, doctor?" She didn't sound condescending exactly, but there was a precision to her tone that could only stem from her line of work.

"Would—would you care to dance?"

Her eyebrows climbed high enough that he feared they might vanish into her hairline. For a moment she looked on the verge of saying something then thought better of it, turning instead to the reporter with a small smile. "Excuse me, Nikki."

So that was her name. Nikki gave a little nod with a smile of her own tucked at the corner of her mouth, and Jophiel extended a gloved hand that Silas took gladly, leaving Nikki and Oskar behind as the two of them stepped out onto the floor.

Silas silently thanked whatever god happened to be listening that the song was a slow one. Although not proper slow dance, it was slow enough that he could lead them both through the room without incident, even if he sense Jophiel might have preferred to lead herself—but how would that have looked? So they danced instead, his hands set carefully at her waist, weaving in near silence through the crowd of chattering guests. An odd sort of contrast, the two of them.

Jophiel broke the quiet first. "I'll admit, doctor, I didn't expect you of all people to ask me to dance."

"And why's that?"

"I guess you didn't strike me as much of a dancer." He spun them both, passing Jackie who seemed to be deep in conversation with both Mitch and Weston. "And you looked pretty content over there with Mr Rex."

Silas' heart very nearly dropped through the floor. "I dance now and then, actually, when it calls for it and the music's half decent." He offered her a smile. She stood taller than most women in the room and met his eyes with an ease that left him unsettled, and that same no-nonsense clip to her voice did nothing to help. "And Oskar and I are… acquaintances."

"That pharaoh tomb, right? Last year. That was the two of you."

"That's right, ma'am."

"Quite impressive."

It had been indeed. They broke apart, hands still joined, only to come back together as the steps resumed. Edward sang his verse, his voice dark and low against the bright run of piano beneath his fingers.

"So how do you know Lord Byewill?" Silas asked, eager to steer them anywhere but back toward Oskar.

"We're old acquaintances," Jophiel echoed, a mirthless grin tugging at her mouth that pulled a matching grin out of Silas despite himself. "He's a longtime client of mine."

Silas nodded, unsure what to do with the fact that one of Britain's most notorious arms dealers was currently dancing with him, and that she'd been selling weapons to their host for who knew how long. Jophiel beat him to any real reaction, turning the questions back on him instead. "Why did your conversation with Mr Rex end so abruptly?"

"What?"

With a firm tug at his hand, she steered them the opposite direction where he'd been leading. "You two seemed to be getting on rather well, and while I'd like to think I'm a delight to be around," it sounded sardonic, "your invitation was awfully sudden."

"I just wanted a dance, and I—couldn't ask Oskar, could I?" Silas tried to defend himself. "I mean, he'd, uh, have to look at least a little less like he wants to throw himself off a balcony before I'd even try, so."

That got a chuckle out of Jophiel, at least, and he laughed with her. "Even so, I think—I think we're hardly in the type of company that would mind," she said, low, almost like a secret. "And I suspect you'd enjoy that particular dance more than you're enjoying this one."

He understood all too well what she meant. After all, he had seen her, why couldn't she have seen him too? Silas' laughter died in his throat just as her eyes flicked past his shoulder and narrowed all too knowingly. "Ah. I see."

Silas still, to this day, didn't know whether Jophiel had steered them or if he had, but either way he found himself looking past her shoulder and straight at Oskar. He looked no different than when Silas had left him minutes earlier. Still leaning against the wall by the window, looking uninterested by the rich display in front of him. Except his knuckles had gone bloodless white around his empty glass, and his eyes hadn't moved from the two of them once.

Anna's voice climbed to a crystalline note and dissolved into the last of the music as Jophiel politely slipped out of Silas' hold.

"Don't get me wrong, doctor," she started, not unkindly. "I don't dislike games. Matter of fact, I quite enjoy them, but I'd appreciate some warning before I'm made part of one. More so, I've got my own to play tonight, so if you'll excuse me."

And with that, as the jazz faded out entirely, she crossed the floor toward Nikki who'd apparently been waiting for her, and left Silas standing there to watch her go. At least the music had stopped with her—small mercies, sparing him to look like a clown who had been abandoned mid-dance. He turned to find Oskar's eyes still fixed on him, head tilted at some angle that could either be question or amusement. He couldn't say from this distance. All he knew for certain was that they were both staring, openly now, and neither one of them was saying a word.

Whatever game Miss Armstrong thought he'd been playing, Silas couldn't tell if he was winning it.

"Doctor Silas? I was looking for you. I had a question about—"

Doctor Sal Fin's voice cut cleanly through his thoughts. He hadn't even heard him coming, but he turned his full attention over regardless, grateful, in a way, for the interruption. He liked Sal—he was interesting enough.

And even with Oskar deep in conversation with Jackie Daytona at the other end of the room, Silas was still hyper aware of his presence, and kept catching the glances thrown his way. Yet he was felt far more conscious of how long he'd been staring at Oskar than by the fact he'd been caught doing it at all.

Dinner had been a tedious affair, if you could even call it that. A French soup the size of an appetizer and two glasses of wine didn't amount to dinner in Silas' book. He'd had more fulfilling meals cooked in a burnt metal pan in the middle of fuck-knows-where England.

Maybe it was the emptiness in his stomach and no way to fill it, or maybe it was how quickly they'd all been packed off to their rooms and his inability to occupy his restless mind, but whatever the cause, it sent Silas wandering the manor in the dead of the night—dreadful decision, in hindsight, but it isn't why we're here.

The manor's private museum was grand and undeniably impressive with its artifacts catching light behind their glass cases, but all it stirred in Silas was abhorrence. People like him fought tooth and nail for funding, gathered dirt under their nails and calluses into their fingers, all to dig these relics out of the earth in the name of science, of history. All that, only to watch the wealthy lock them away in a private room for the entertainment of dinner guests. Ah, if Silas hadn't learned how to deal with that bitterness, he might have done something reckless tonight.

Though, if Oskar's instincts were any indication—and they usually were—someone would likely beat him to the punch anyway.

Seeing Oskar again tonight had caught him off guard. Silas hadn't known he was coming, and Oskar clearly hadn't known about him either if the startled pause between them at the beginning of the evening was anything to go by. He had fumbled his spyglass, and Oskar had caught it neatly with the toe of his shoe. But Silas suspected he wouldn't still be this preoccupied, wandering the dark hallways at this hour, if Oskar hadn't thought to bring up Egypt at all.

Why had he brought up Egypt?

It wasn't as though Oskar Rex ran especially deep with emotions. As far as Silas was concerned, Oskar didn't reminisce and didn't dwell long on anything that struck him as superficial. He was the sudden strike of a lightning bolt, a hotshot. He kept a goal in view and moved toward it without pause—spectacularly single-minded. Sometimes, he killed and didn't bother to wipe the blood off his hands because it'd take him too much time. Yet, he'd brought up Egypt anyway, when he could've let the thought pass.

A glint of sapphire caught the corner of Silas' eye and stopped him in his stroll. He turned toward the case, staring at the gold detailing gleaming under the artificial light… and memories came rushing back. It seemed to happen a lot, tonight.

Silas considered doing something remarkably reckless.

Well. Carpe diem, as they said. Given the hour, it would probably be carpe noctem, though he wasn't about to quibble over semantics. All that mattered was that within minutes he found himself standing in front of Oskar's door, and he didn't let himself think twice before knocking against the hardwood.

The door swung open. "You'd better have a damn good excuse to bother me at this hour of the—Doctor?"

Oskar might have tried to smooth the surprise out of his voice, but Silas caught it still. He hadn't been called 'doctor' by him since the first few weeks of knowing each other and yet, despite the rare occurrence of catching Oskar off guard, it was Silas who found himself tongue-tied standing there.

He must have been deep in thoughts, or pacing. He had a habit of dragging a hand through his hair whenever he was thinking, and the evidence was written all over him now, black and white strands sticking out in every direction. His vest hung unbuttoned, the first few buttons of the shirt beneath it—God—undone as well, giving Silas an unobstructed view of his collarbones and the familiar glint of a silver chain disappearing past them. His tie had slipped loose around his throat, his trousers gone rumpled… and the way Oskar was taking him in just as thoroughly as Silas was drinking him in to satiate himself did nothing at all for the dryness of his mouth.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" ventured Oskar.

"I… was wondering if I could show you something. In the museum."

"At," he checked his watch, "two in the morning."

Silas' brows rose. "C'mon. Don't act like you were sleeping."

"Clearly, neither were you." And though Oskar sounded carefully bored, there was a small grin tugging at his mouth that told Silas everything about his answer before he'd even given it. "Only you would be pacing a museum at night," he sighed. "Fucking hell, why not. Lead the way."

Silas stepped back to let him out, but Oskar had other ideas. He ducked back into the room for a few seconds, clinking sounds echoed down the hallway. He reappeared with two glasses of whiskey in hand, the same amber gold as earlier, and shut the door behind him with the feel of his shoe. Silas couldn't suppress his amusement.

"Thought you had no chance of getting that bottle back?"

"Oh, I did have no chance of getting it back." Oskar handed over the cool glass, watching intently as Silas took the first sip. "Solomon didn't give it to me, I just happened to find where he'd stashed it. Figured you'd still want a drink."

"Happened to, hm?"

Oskar smiled, devilish, above the rim of his glass. "I'm a great businessman, Silas. Stop asking questions and start walking."

They moved through the manor in silence, nothing but the shuffle of their footsteps and the occasional sip from their glasses breaking the eerie hush of Meadowgloom. Ordinarily Silas might have found that silence oppressive, especially when shared, but the whiskey and the wine had gone straight to his head. He felt sort of fiendishly free from the burn of liquor on an empty stomach.

"I do wonder what could be important enough to warrant waking me in the middle of night," Oskar mused as they neared the museum. Silas didn't remember it took this long when he'd walked the opposite way, and both their glasses ran comfortably low by then.

"I didn't wake you, I know you weren't sleeping."

"For all you know, I could have been. I've had men killed for less."

"Oh, I'm terrified," Silas deadpanned, not even remotely terrified.

"You could've woken someone else instead."

Silas snorted. "Like who?"

"You seemed to be getting on well with Doctor Fin," Oskar noted, deceptively conversational. "Two educated doctors, it seems like the safer bet. I got the impression he'd have followed you anywhere."

Oh?

Under the pretense of simple conversation, his words were sardonic enough that it seemed to seep straight into Silas' whiskey, the doctor drank it down, down, down greedily, the bitter aftertaste and all. He could almost feel guilty, savoring a feeling as unbecoming as jealousy, but it had come from Oskar. Stoic, unshakeable, resolute Oskar, laid bare for just a moment and only where Silas was concerned. It coursed viciously through him with a force close to violence, that heady rush, and Silas could only take shelter from it behind his earlier confusion from the dancefloor rather than let anything show. As not to betray just how pleased he was at that flash of Oskar's internality, what lived underneath him.

Maybe he did know, now, the game Miss Armstrong thought he'd been playing.

"… You wouldn't have expected Jophiel?"

"Armstrong?" Oskar scoffed. "Please. She wouldn't be interested. She'd have shut the door in your face."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence," Silas huffed.

"That's not what I meant."

The hall toward the museum was wide and cold and still Silas had never felt warmer than in the instant he met Oskar's eyes. Undecipherable, unknowable Oskar, telling him something yet not telling him at all. Miss Armstrong wouldn't have wanted you. You wouldn't have wanted Miss Armstrong either. I know that much. I do.

But did he know the rest of it?

"I wouldn't have taken Miss Armstrong," Silas said, finally breaking their eye contact. "And as much I actually like Doctor Fin, I wouldn't—it wouldn't have done, either. I woke you up, didn't I."

Did he know how thoroughly Silas had spent the better of a year failing to want anyone half so much as he wanted the impossible?

The non-question simmered as they arrived at the museum. Oskar's gaze swept the ostentatious room in all its relics and portraits and marble busts and medieval tapestries, all of them staring them down with dead and severe eyes. Silas watched him closely, hungry for whatever reaction might slip from him. What he got eventually was a vitriolic smile, all teeth.

"Generational wealth keeps doing what generational wealth does, don't it," Oskar said, head tipped back to study the skull of a jackalope mounted above them.

"Couldn't have put it better myself," Silas agreed, though his attention was caught on the line of Oskar's throat. "The thing I wanted to show you is further back. Follow me."

He led Oskar to the diamond with the sapphire glint.

It was a gorgeous piece. It stood out from the rather dull countenance of the rest of the collection by color and craft alone. Through the glass, the diamond sat encased in gold itself, studded with tiny fragments that seemed to have fallen loose from the stone's own facets. The whole thing was imperfect in a way Silas found fascinating. It looked like human hands hadn't touched it yet, even though they had—in his opinion, it didn't deserve to be locked away from the public eye.

Beside him, Oskar stepped forward. Silas watched the gears turning behind his eyes as he studied it. "That's gorgeous," he murmured, as if afraid of waking it. Its light caught and flickered in the dark bruise of his irises. "Worth a hefty pile of cash too, I bet."

"Do you ever think about anything else?"

"Sometimes," Oskar said, glancing sideways at him before his eyes drifted back to the stone. "Pretty as it is, and as much as it made me want to punt old Lord Byewill clean to the moon, was it really worth a nightly stroll?"

"I don't know," Silas shrugged, though he could feel his own heartbeat in his throat. He threw back the last of his drink for some liquid courage. Carpe diem, noctem, whatever. "I think it just—it reminded me a lot of Egypt."

Oskar froze up, and Silas would have traded nearly anything not to be left staring at his back just then. For him to turn just enough to let Silas at least try to guess what he was thinking. Instead Oskar kept his back to him, and Silas noticed helplessly the way the tie at the back of his vest was almost undone, itching to tie it back.

"… Why did it make you think of Egypt?" Oskar asked, quieter than before.

"D'you remember when we found the tomb's antechamber?" Silas waited for Oskar to nod, and continued when he did. "There were… so many things like this in there. It'd been looted for sure, but there were still the beds, and the jewelry with the stones. Gold, everywhere. I know this comes from the Meadowgloom mines but I—thought you might like to see something close to it again. I remember you being taken with it."

A moment passed during which Silas had never been more grateful for the whiskey that was blunting the anxiousness in his stomach, until Oskar finally turned back around.

He was grinning. It was crooked and understated, but there nonetheless.

"Ha. Remember that kid who tried to make off with the wooden wheel?" he asked, walking back to Silas' side. He thought he could feel his chest decompress just then.

"The kid… you mean Sidefall?" he laughed.

Oskar snapped his gloved fingers. "Them, yeah. Never did figure how he through he'd get away with it. Or why the hell you kept them on after."

"They did the dirty work no one would do. Determined little shit," Silas reminisced. "A diamond in the rough."

"He'd have stolen your diamond in the rough."

"You don't know that."

Oskar shot him an unimpressed look, and Silas answered it with something closer to a Mona Lisa smile, and together they turned back toward the glass with their arms brushing at the closeness. All at once they weren't in a marble room anymore but back at the dig, nothing around them but the arid desert and the smell of metal, sunburnt cheeks and dirt-caked hands with purple bags beneath their eyes, wind pulling at their hair. Back to when there had been no one else in the world but the two of them and a long-dead king.

Back to the night they'd kissed and fallen asleep tangled together after, with no witness to a single word they'd said to each other but the Night herself.

"Egypt was a good time," Silas breathed out.

"Do you ever think about it? Egypt." Oskar asked, eyes flicking briefly to Silas.

It was so like him, to strike when least expected. And it was so like Silas, who was so selfish with his secrets, not to answer with the whole truth.

"I don't know. Do you?"

He shook his head, though not in a negative motion. "I think—I want another drink." He started back the way they'd come, glancing over his shoulder at Silas with a strange kind of mellowness. "The bottle in my room's barely got a dent in it. What do you say, old man?"

If you'd told Silas at the start of the evening that he'd end up sat in Oskar Rex's room sharing a bottle of whiskey and talking about what happened back in Luxor, Egypt, he'd probably would've first demanded to know how the hell you knew about Luxor, Egypt. Then, he'd have wondered how he'd ended up here.

He was still wondering about it as he took the bottle back from Oskar's hand.

They'd sprawled themselves across the velvet couch at the center of the spacious room, one on each end. Dim lamplight scattered through the space, and in their golden hush the room barely read as a bedroom anymore and more like their own private speakeasy, with its wide empty spaces and its tall windows. They'd both long since given up on glasses once it became clear that drinking straight from the bottleneck was more convenient. It was a pleasant buzz, and whatever stiffness the topic of Egypt might have brought with it had long since drained out of the conversation.

Mostly because they weren't actually talking about the thing Silas wanted to know.

"That could have hardly qualified as a meal," Oskar complained. His fist was propped against his cheek and his elbow braced on the back cushions.

"You're just gone soft with all your refineries, now," Silas teased, tipping the bottle back before passing it along. "That's real life for you, Oskar."

"Eating chicken sludge?" he grimaced.

"Oh my God, you make it sound so bad. You ate it, I ate it. The whole crew ate it. Even Sidefall ate it. You're gonna let a kid outdo you?"

"The kid also tried to steal a chariot wheel out of the antechamber of a three thousand year old pharaoh's tomb. I'm not so sure about your example."

"What does that even have to do with the chicken?"

"Nothing, doctor. I'm just pointing out you've got shit examples."

Silas couldn't help but laugh, the sound drawn out louder and easier by the atmosphere and the pleasant haze spreading slow through his limbs. Oskar tipped the bottle back himself, watching him over the rim and his burning eyes steady as he swallowed slow, slow. And instead of looking away, Silas let himself bask in the attention.

The wet shine of alcohol clung to Oskar's mouth, red as if bitten and winking in the light like treasure, and Silas' eyes dropped there instantly. Of course, they did. He suddenly craved something to busy his hands and mouth again that drinking alone couldn't give him, to pull his hungry and desperate stare away from the fact he already knew the taste of that mouth, and wondered if the oak of the whiskey changed it at all. His thoughts circled back to the cigarette in this pocket.

"You wouldn't happen to have a lighter, would you?" Silas asked, hastily fumbling through his trousers. The paper had crumpled during the course of the night, but oh well—the field taught you to make do with a cigarette in any state.

Oskar spoke with his forehead pressed to the bottle's glass. "You plan on smoking in here."

"Does it still bothers you?" Silas' words were muffled as he tucked the cigarette between his lips.

Oskar seemed on the fence for a second, then dug into his vest pocket and tossed him a small pack of matches, which Silas caught one-handed. Oskar gave an appreciative nod. "You're fine. It doesn't bother me the way it used to. You run in the same circles I do, you learn to deal with it."

The familiar motion soothed him—match, strike, light, out—and was a welcome distraction from the boiling in his veins and the erratic knock of his own pulse. Maybe if he just stopped looking at Oskar, it would settle. Silas slumped deeper into he couch and tipped his head back over the armrest, loosening the too-tight knot of his tie with the hand that wasn't occupied by the cigarette. He exhaled a thin ribbon of smoke and watched it drift into nothingness.

"I don't think I even remember you smoking. In Egypt," Oskar said. His voice sounded off, somewhat strange in a way Silas wanted to think about, if only to stroke his own ego.

"I mostly smoked when you weren't around. I knew you didn't care for it."

The last sentence was supposed to be a thought and stay a thought. But good whiskey and low lights and the astringent feel of tobacco on Silas' tongue made it run beyond his will, and erased any energy he might usually have had to be mortified. He couldn't see Oskar in his position but oh, he could feel him as if he were alive beneath his skin, the split-second stop of his frame and his eyes on him. They seared, his eyes. Silas wondered if it was their ordinary weight he'd simply forgotten or if there was more to it.

Do you remember? Do you, do you, do you, Oskar? Do you remember?

The decadent crimson flush in his chest. It felt far better than any type of awkwardness Silas would've ordinarily drowned in—he wanted to drown himself in it instead. He wanted to drown himself in Oskar and never come up for air.

He took another drag of his cigarette instead.

"So you were the reason for that dreadful smell," Oskar snorted, and Silas heard him down another quick gulp.

"No. That was cigar smoke—"

"—and you hate cigar smoke, yes. Your tent smelled of cigar smoke because half the crew kept sneaking off the smoke them. But mine smelled of tobacco." A pause. "Everything in my tent smelled of tobacco, and old parchment, and graphite. That's what I remember about Egypt."

He took another rough pull from the bottle, and it sort of felt like the bottle had done something to offend him. Silas knew better than to think this was about the drink. He knew because he'd caved in and lifted his head to look at him. He'd felt like he needed to.

The tobacco and the parchment paper and graphite, all of it had been Silas. He'd taken to work in Oskar's tent instead of his own because no one dared to bother Oskar as freely as they'd let themselves bother Silas, and sometimes certain thoughts were best shared when it was only the two of them. They'd toed a line in that same tent, too, and broken it entirely—the night Silas came undone.

"Can I try?" Oskar asked, nodding at the cigarette between Silas' lips before Silas could gather an answer.

Silas couldn't hide his surprise. "Why? You don't even like it."

"I never actually tried it. Color me curious, I want to know what's good enough to keep your mouth so occupied."

And there was little Silas could summon the will to do against words like those. Oskar had always been better at them than he had, even if he rarely spent that particular gift on anything but land deals (and flustering him.) But they weren't in Egypt anymore—God knew they weren't—and circumstances had changed, and Silas, all in mellow veins and cheeks flushed with both want and unease, found himself just as curious as to how far he could push before Oskar was the one to break, this time.

"You probably won't like the immediate taste," Silas noted, forcing an uncharacteristic laziness into his voice as he rose up onto his elbows. "And I'm not about to waste my only cigarette of the night."

"That's an awful lot of words for no."

"That's—" Silas huffed and sat up properly, pulling the cigarette from his mouth. "—not what I said. Let's not start putting words in my mouth."

Shifting on the couch, there were now only a few inches of space left between them, and maybe the alcohol had dimmed his senses because it took Oskar a little too long to register the closeness. His first instinct was to pull back. Barely an inch, nothing dramatic. Still, Silas wouldn't have it.

He tapped cigarette's filter lightly beneath Oskar's chin, which earned him a startled frown, and used that delicious momentum to his advantage. Pressing the cigarette's end gently in the hollow beneath his jaw, Silas guided him back into place. "You trust me?"

Those unreachable violet eyes of his, both wide with surprise and narrow with suspicion. Silas liked how they had no choice now but to fix entirely on him.

"Trust is a relative concept," Oskar said, bemused.

"Can't say I disagree."

Silas brought the cigarette back to his mouth and Oskar tracked the movement with an attention so careful it bordered on suffocating. Slowly, with smoke cajoling the walls of his throat, Silas brought his loosely closed fist up between their two mouths, their lips on either side of it, and exhaled the thin cloud of nicotine through the small gap between his fingers. Oskar's lips parted, and for a handful of seconds the smoke was everywhere: seeping in the chevron wallpaper, burning the inside of his fingers, fogging every coherent thought he might have otherwise had. The smoke was Oskar, the thought of him, that he'd been trying to hold in his bare hands but never managed without getting burned. Not until recently.

Silas let his fist drop just enough to rest against both their lower lips, and raised an eyebrow.

"I can't believe you're ruining your lungs with this," Oskar murmured. The words, muffled against Silas' skin, were felt more than heard. He looked equally dazed. "Though it's exactly how I remember it."

"Tobacco smells the same everywhere."

"More like the taste."

There was no helping the flush of his cheeks.

More often than he cared to admit, Silas replayed that kiss. Not the exact memory of it—that, he knew well enough already: Oskar's tent and the wind battering the canvas wall, the lamp guttering low, and the certainty that come tomorrow, it would all be over. They'd return to their respective corners of the world and let it go. No, no. There was enough bitterness in him as it was. What Silas liked to revisit were the sensations of it.

The cold desert night against the heat radiating off Oskar, who always seemed to run hotter than the air around him. The softness of his palms against Silas' calluses. The taste of his mouth and how it lingered in the saliva gathered behind his teeth well into the following day. Silas had wondered, more than once, how it had felt from the other side.

Tobacco, apparently.

Silas pulled back, allowing himself to drag his knuckle briefly against Oskar's lower lip before letting his fist fall away entirely. He stubbed out what remained of the cigarette in the small ashtray on the table, if only to give the building ache in his chest something to do besides go on wanting. He let his eyes wander the room instead. He couldn't meet Oskar's yet. Try as alcohol might, he was still painfully himself underneath it all, and needed a moment to gather that self back together.

Oskar said something, but the blood roaring in his ears buried the words. He landed instead on the lone phonograph by the window. Its golden horn caught the lamplight, the glimmer of it twinkling like a wink from across the room, and his mind drifted, unbidden, back to what Miss Armstrong had said.

I suspect you'd enjoy that particular dance more than you're enjoying this one.

He thought back about a year and a world ago, too, and before Silas had fully registered it his feet had already carried him halfway across the room.

"Silas. What are you doing?" Oskar called. He sounded exasperated. Frustrated.

A small stack of records sat beside the pedestal table. The uppermost sleeve—and Silas could've laughed—bore a photograph of Edward and Anna: her draped elegantly over the piano as he played beneath her, and the title printed across it named a song Silas knew very well. He replayed it in his mind often, in a faraway memory. Oh, he could've laughed, alright. But instead Silas took the record and slid the shellac disc from its sleeve.

"What I remember about Egypt—" He set the disc onto the turntable with care, guided the needle down, and let the mechanism whir to life. "—is a little different."

The first notes echoed in the wide room, and Silas turned back to find Oskar still on the couch, watching him from where he'd draped himself over the armrest, head propped against the nearly empty bottle. He wore a look of both recognition and assessment. Weighting what was about to happen, what he meant to do about it. He always looked at things that way.

Silas had squirmed under that same look mere hours ago, but he didn't feel any urge to now.

Anna's sultry voice rose higher and higher, sweet and honeyed, not unlike it had in the ballroom before, and Silas crossed the remaining distance toward Oskar. He extended a hand. Not quite steady, but extended all the same.

Oskar's eyes dropped to the offered palm first. They traveled slowly up the veins of his forearm, bared where his sleeves had rucked up, tracing higher and higher and up, up, up, with a care so deliberate it left Silas feel very undressed despite still being very clothed. Until, finally, his gaze reached Silas' own.

"I don't think you remember correctly, then," Oskar said, slow. "I was a terrible dancer."

"Who cares. It's only me."

It's only the two of us. There's no one watching. No one.

There were a few seconds that made Silas feel like he'd made a mistake. That, maybe, reminiscing was well and good but that was all it would ever amount to, and that he'd go on being exactly what he'd always been: a dreamer who kept right on dreaming bigger than his circumstances often allowed.

But then Oskar set the whiskey bottle beside the ashtray and, warily, slid his palm into Silas'.

Just as carefully as the gesture had been made, Silas drew them both toward the open space between the couches and the phonograph. It was wide enough for what they needed. It might not have been as wide as a ballroom, but it was plenty enough for Silas, who wanted nothing more than this: the dim lights pooling golden, the comfortable haze of a late night, of dizzying tiredness, of alcohol pulling at his limbs. Of him.

Warm, Silas thought, feeling it radiate through the hand still folded in his own. He always runs so warm.

Dancing was maybe too generous of a word for what they did. Oskar's hand traveled clumsily on Silas' shoulder, and he startled when Silas' palm only ghosted, featherlight, at the dip of his waist—which Silas found he enjoyed, being for once the one to catch Oskar off guard. To the same song that had played then, they began to way more than they danced, drawn in close enough that the music was almost muffled between their two bodies. And just as he had a year ago, Oskar kept his eyes fixed studiously on his own feet.

"You know, the floor won't disappear if you stop staring at it," Silas quipped teasingly.

Oskar scoffed. "Big talk coming from the man Armstrong led around the whole dance."

Silas smiled at his defensiveness. It's only by mischievousness and a desire to see Oskar squirm, for once, that made him lift their joined hand and spin him. Oskar, feared land baron and known by name alone, stumbled gracelessly on his pristine new shoes and nearly caught his foot in the carpet beneath them. Silas laughed outright this time, reeling him back in against his chest, and Oskar answered with a withering glare from too close a distance to be intimidating.

"Careful, Silas. I could slit your throat in your sleep. I could knock you out cold, and you wouldn't even know it was me."

Spoken that low and through lowered lashes, with barely an inch left between their mouths, the threat sounded more like an invitation than anything else.

"I know you could. Would you, though?"

Oskar didn't answer. His grip tightened at Silas' shoulder, his knuckles pressing into the place where his neck met his collarbone, and Silas felt his eyes almost flutter shut at the uncharacteristic gentleness of it.

He cleared his throat. "Miss Armstrong is a good dancer. Maybe… maybe too good for me."

"I've seen that."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it." Silas turned them slow. Anna's voice dipped low and the saxophones took the melody for themselves. "But she's—not who I'd wanted, originally. To dance with."

Greedily, Silas let the hand still tangled with Oskar drift lower until his fingers found his pulse point.

"I wonder who might've earned the particular privilege of your attention," Oskar said, guarded.

"I'm sure you can guess," Silas murmured, tipping his chin down to look at him properly over the rim of his glasses. He could count the flecks of purple in his eyes, if he wanted to.

Their feet had fallen into a comfortable rhythm by that point, following the melody with easy steps. Oskar bit the inside of his cheek—bad habit of his.

"We couldn't have," he huffed humorlessly. "You know that."

Silas tried to ignore the painful, knowing pang in his chest. "I know, I know. Just—imagine, if we could. Like Miss Armstrong and Miss Nikki."

He seemed to consider it as they took another turn. "I'm an horrible dancer. I'd have made a fool of myself, and of you too, in front of everyone. Christ, can you imagine?"

"I don't know, I think you're managing just fine right now."

"I'm sure Dr Fin would've made a better partner than me, in this blatantly unrealistic hypothetical situ—"

"I wanted to dance with you."

Frustration, sardonically mixed with all of the pent up feelings he'd tried to repress, was cutting his patience short. "I wanted to dance with you, Oskar, exactly like we're dancing now. I didn't want anyone else in that ballroom tonight. Is that clear enough for you?"

They were so close together. Silas didn't know when it happened. They were so close, the buttons of their vests caught against each other with every sway. Oskar had tipped his head up to meet him at some point. They seemed to be trading the same breath back and forth between them, each one breathing the other in before he'd even finished breathing out.

Silas would have never said such things under ordinary circumstances. But contained Silas, Silas the archeologist, glasses askew, buried in his work, he was overflowing at the seams. So much threatened to spill out, all at once, the liquor and the memories and the feelings and his pathetically pulsing heart crying for a matching rhythm it could only find now. Silas the human being stood on the very edge of being laid bare for Oskar's inspection, and he wasn't at all sure what to do with himself now that he was.

Or maybe he did know. Knowing wasn't the same thing as acting.

Do you remember, Oskar? Do you, do you, do—

"Do you remember," Silas whispered, "in Egypt? That's what I've wanted, this whole time. It's all I could think about."

Take the leap. Please, take it. I can't do more, so please.

And, see, some part of him almost wanted to apologize for it. His voice shook and strands of hair fell loose across his face, the intensity at which he felt was so raw he feared it might send Oskar running. He really thought he did, when Oskar's hands slipped from his body. It was like sobering up, just like that.

Undecipherable, unknowable Oskar. Staring at him so openly. Watching him now with nothing, nothing, hidden at all. All of a sudden, Silas understood. Silas deciphered the he'd always known how to. There was his word. Silas knew, in a matter of seconds, everything there was to know.

(But Silas remained selfish as ever. He wasn't about to confess what he'd found, nor would he share his unearthing of Oskar Rex, not even a page. So this much you'll get, and no more:)

With out of character softness and furrowed brows, in concentration or else, Oskar reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair from Silas' eyes, then reached with his other hand to lift the glasses from his nose. Silas, gone pliant with emotions, let him do so without protest. The small clink of metal hitting the wooden table cut clean through the phonograph and—

Oskar kissed him. Simple as that.

If he'd been gentle before, then there was nothing gentle about this. He caught Silas by the back of the neck, rough nails pressing into his nape, and hauled him down to meet him like a crash. It's not as though Silas had been very gentle either, gripping his waist hungrily, pushing and pressing him back against the pedestal table hard enough to rattle the record still spinning beside them, bending so swallow every breath, every sound Oskar made against his mouth. There was nothing gentle about a year of wanting, constantly aching to consume, when it was finally within reach. So there was nothing gentle about either of them.

Oskar tasted of amber when their mouths met. Silas drank it down, that and the heat of whiskey sliding down his throat when his tongue slipped past Oskar's lips, and he met it eagerly, answering with an appetite that only seemed to grow the longer it was fed, tobacco and sugar. Oskar's hand found his hair, tugging at the scalp to drag him closer, kiss him deeper, and Silas couldn't help but sigh in contentment. Forget alcohol, forget liquor. They could outlaw it a thousand times over and Silas would still find himself drunk on this instead. Would bottle it if he could, and drink himself dumb with it every single night for the rest of his life. He'd find a way to do it. He would.

This. This was what he'd been missing. There was nothing else in the world but this: the two of them here, and nothing beyond it. Not Egypt, not Meadowgloom Manor. Nothing at all but them.

Silas' hands slid up from Oskar's waist to cradle his jaw, thumbs stroking slow along his cheekbones, while the grip Oskar had kept in his hair finally eased, coming to rest against his chest with his fingers toying absently with the buttons of his vest. It made Silas smile, this gesture in the middle of the kiss, and he broke away just long enough to press one to the corner of Oskar's mouth. Oskar let out an almost embarrassed huff, and tugged him back by the tie to kiss him properly all over again.

"I remember," whispered Oskar, broken, when they parted for air. Silas could find no better excuse than that to kiss him again. "Silas."

Oskar, coming alive between his hands. No longer smoke but a material being he could hold, could map with his mouth and his hands, could uncover, discover, decipher at his leisure.

His Oskar. His, his, his. Only his to read, only his to have.

"Do you plan on disappearing on me again, or am I finally worthy of an address to reach you at, this time around?"

Silas snorted, the sound muffled against the hollow of Oskar's collarbone as he occupied himself twisting and unrolling the man's loosened tie around his fingers. "Keep on being bitter. See where that gets you."

Oskar tugged at his hair, both to reprimand and to make Silas look at him. They'd sprawled themselves across the bed, shirts and ties crumpled and halfway shed, the covers twisted and bunched somewhere near their feet. The music duo's voice still echoed in the room, in a faraway place estranged from them. The lights had long dimmed to little more than a flicker which dipped most of their faces into shadows. Ironically, it was about as much light they'd been allowed during those nights in Luxor.

"Don't try me, old man," Oskar warned in a low, low voice, though his hands betrayed him, trailing down to brush the barest touch against the two matching moles flanking Silas' nose. How strange, and how peculiar, that a man so fond of threats could turn this gentle, when he wanted to. Silas turned his face into that palm and pressed a kiss to the mound of it.

He felt Oskar flush before he saw it. Forward as he tended to be about most things, feelings had never come easily to him. "You cut your hair since then," he said abruptly, in need of a topic change, and Silas smiled against his hand. "I liked it better longer."

"Did you? I hated it. I couldn't see a damn thing while I was working."

"Mm. You could've always tied it back, like you used to." His other hand drifted up into the length of Silas' hair—or what remained of it, falling now barely past his shoulders.

"D'you want me to grow it out again?"

"I don't know. Would I still be around to see it if you did?"

Silas was silent for maybe too long a moment before answering, "I think… I think I'd like you to be, yeah."

Because here's the thing that Silas didn't want to admit, or to say, that he'd guarded as fiercely as any secret he'd ever kept. The only reason he was willing to even let this slip now what that it had become unavoidable: he'd been scared. Scratch that, he'd been petrified after that kiss.

And it was that entirely that led him to be the one to flee and dig the distance between them in the months after Egypt. On purpose, with both hands.

It's a frightening thing, for someone who never had the time to fully know how far his preferences, his desires could go, to be faced all of a sudden with the immensity of human longing, and be gone and helpless faced with the extent of his own heart. It was almost shameful to not know, not have let himself examine it too closely, at his age especially, but perhaps not as shameful as he felt was even the pang of wanting—men, in general, and the terrifying specificity of wanting one man, this man, more than he'd let himself want anything in years. Silas had built a whole life around not acknowledging it. It had certainly been easier that way.

It's daunting, and you can only learn to accommodate it by experience, not by knowledge or reading. You can't possibly prepare yourself for that, when you spent your teenage years preparing for college and your college years always preparing for more.

And Silas had been so very thoroughly unprepared by how undone he had been made by Oskar Rex, and how easily it had been to be so.

Exchanging a clipped handful of words that final morning, the two of them boarding separate boats and trains to Cairo. The months after hiding behind pretenses of busyness while Oskar was genuinely occupied, and Silas sat staring at a telephone he never picked up, thinking about him regardless. Catching glimpses of him from across crowded rooms at events following the tomb's discovery, never once finding the nerve to close the distance, ducking into corners—not until tonight, surrounded by strangers who couldn't have cared less.

He hadn't come to terms with the sheer boundlessness of what he felt, not only about men but about Oskar—his Oskar, if he was even allowed to call him that—until very recently.

Oskar shifted underneath him and dragged a free hand back through his own hair. Aaah. Silas knew that particular gesture well by now. He untangled his fingers from the tie and caught that hand instead, pulling it free from the sleepy tangle of black and white. "You're thinking. Care to tell me about what?"

"I—" Oskar started, then shut his eyes. Hard. And sighed, visibly at war with himself. How was it that a man this brazen about everything else could find plain honesty so difficult? "I did want to dance with you, too, in the ballroom. I didn't—envy Armstrong herself, that would be foolish given what I know. But I guess I envied how… how easily she could dance with you, in front of everyone. A very foolish sentiment, all things considered. Because I know how this has to be."

Oskar looked down at him, and that alone told Silas where this was headed.

"If we do this properly, if we stay, in whatever metaphorical form it entails, we can never dance together like that. You understand that." (I need you to understand that, Silas translated with his newfound knowledge. The only scrap you'll get.)

Silas didn't need to think about it, because he'd thought about it, tortured himself awake during long nights about it, every day since Luxor, Egypt. He'd spent more than enough time trying to catalogue a thing that couldn't be quantified and that stubbornly refused to be measured the way he measured everything else in his professional life. There was no Silas, the archeologist and Silas, the human being, nor was there any vice or heady rush.

There was just Silas. And so there was no hesitation at all when Silas threaded his fingers through the gaps of Oskar's.

He did dream about dancing in a ballroom, with the music playing live, but—

"Y'know, I'm happy enough just dancing together. The two of us."

Oskar scrutinized him, assessing as he did, and so Silas hoisted himself up onto an elbow until they were face to face, close enough to he could assess him correctly, though the few inches he had on Oskar will never not amuse him. Slowly, gently, Silas pressed a kiss to his forehead.

"Oskar. I'm not leaving. I promise. I want this, I do." He kissed the side of his nose next. "Even if you're a shit dancer."

"Oh, come on—"

This time, their lips met halfway as they collapsed into it together. Silas nearly laughed at how quick Oskar had been to shut him up, but he melted into it him still, further and further and down and down, until he was nothing else but a heartbeat gathered in Oskar's hand, and Oskar was nothing else but a soul laid bare. Kissing back, again and again, until they were both messy and breathless and terrible. So terrible.

Silas meant every word of it. He wasn't leaving. He couldn't even picture it now, not after tonight. But he understood now that Oskar wouldn't let himself believe it until morning came with the cold sun rising behind the blind, and Oskar opened his eyes to find Silas still there beside him, body mellow with sleep and mouth unguarded by dreams, exactly where he'd left him.

So Silas would simply have to still be there. That was all. He would be here in the morning, unlike a year ago. He repeated that to himself as he fell asleep, when the last song on Anna and Edward's record faded out and Oskar's breathing evened out against him despite their tangled limbs.

The sun would rise, and Oskar would be there. And this time, so would Silas.